I wore a FuelBand for around two years. I loved my FuelBand. I thought perhaps I would never part ways with it. And then I got my Apple Watch. And when I switched the FuelBand out with my Apple Watch I realized something kinda’ rad. I didn’t loose anything. The reason is that the Nike Fuel app now supports “Phone Tracking” which uses the sensors in the phone instead of the sensors in the FuelBand to track your movements. Obviously you’ll need your phone to use it.
So what did the FuelBand do and what does the watch do? Basically, the FuelBand tracked steps, workouts and other typical activity and then converted steps and active calorie expenditure into a number that took as much information as Nike had available to try and provide you a score on how you did. The FuelBands strengths were that it was a simple bangle that synchronized to your phone and lasted a good week at times between charges. The sync was fast, sometimes happened in the background (sometimes not-so-much) and Nike understands competing, so a huge strength of the solution was the resultant Trophies (gamification, yo) and prodding to always do better.
When I decided to write an article comparing these devices, I didn’t realize I’d be getting rid of my FuelBand. But I clearly don’t need three wearables on my wrists (I still wear my FitBit). But I slowly came to realize more and more that if Nike had wanted to remain in the wearables market, they would have needed to really redesign and make serious improvements to the FuelBand two years ago. The original product was awesome for the time, but there’s so much more that can be done today. This is all just a long way of say that the purpose of this article changed a bit to if you’re thinking about dumping a FuelBand and getting an AppleWatch, here are some things to know:
- The AppleWatch battery needs to be charged every day.
- The Apple Watch doesn’t have as many, or as cool of trophies (called Achievements).
- The Apple Watch monitors your heart rate.
- The FuelBand isn’t necessary for the Nike Fuel, Nike Training Club or Nike Running apps as they can use your phone for motion tracking.
- There is a Nike Running app for the Apple Watch.
- There are apps for any of the little things you might want the Apple Watch to do that it doesn’t do out of the box, such as tracking your food intake (calories out are one thing of course but for many, calories in matter more).
- The Apple Watch can be used to track exercise without the iPhone present. You can also listen to music from the watch without your phone, if you have a Bluetooth headset.
Everything else is way cooler and better and more awesome on the Apple Watch.